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Segment

A segment is a part of the prompt with a certain context. There are different types available out-of-the-box, if you're looking for what's included, feel free to skip this part and browse through the segments. Keep reading to understand how to configure a segment.

{
  "blocks": [
    {
      "segments": [
        {
          "type": "path",
          "style": "powerline",
          "powerline_symbol": "",
          "foreground": "#ffffff",
          "background": "#61AFEF",
          "template": " {{ .Path }} ",
          "include_folders": [
            "/Users/posh/Projects"
          ]
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}

Settings​

NameTypeDescription
typestringtakes the string value referencing which segment logic it needs to run (see segments for possible values)
stylestringsee Style below. Possible values:
powerline_symbolstringcharacter to use when "style": "powerline"
leading_powerline_symbolstringwhen "style": "powerline" we use an ANSI hack to invert the powerline_symbol to create a transparent glyph. This gives the best alignment, but might not work in every terminal. If you see black elements at the start of powerline segments, you can set this to the "opening" version of the powerline_symbol.
invert_powerlinebooleanif true swaps the foreground and background colors. Can be useful when the character you want does not exist in the perfectly mirrored variant for example - defaults to false
leading_diamondstringcharacter to use at the start of the segment. Will take the background color of the segment as its foreground color
trailing_diamondstringcharacter to use at the end of the segment. Will take the background color of the segment as its foreground color
foregroundstringcolor
foreground_templates[]Templatecolor templates
backgroundstringcolor
background_templates[]Templatecolor templates
templatestringa go text/template template to render the prompt
templates[]Templatein some cases having a single template string is a bit cumbersome. Templates allows you to span the segment's template string multiple lines where every template is evaluated and depending on what you aim to achieve, there are two possible outcomes based on templates_logic
templates_logicstring
  • first_match: return the first non-whitespace string and skip everything else
  • join:evaluate all templates and join all non-whitespace strings (default)
properties[]Propertysee Properties below
interactivebooleanwhen is true, the segment text is not escaped to allow the use of interactive prompt escape sequences in Bash/Zsh - defaults to false
aliasstringfor use with cross segment template properties
min_widthintif the terminal width is smaller than this value, the segment will be hidden. For your terminal width, see oh-my-posh get width. Defaults to 0 (disable)
max_widthintif the terminal width exceeds this value, the segment will be hidden. For your terminal width, see oh-my-posh get width. Defaults to 0 (disable)
cacheCachehow to cache the segment to avoid fetching information too much, see below
include_folders[]stringdefine which folders to include to enable the segment, see below
exclude_folders[]stringdefine which folders to exclude to disable the segment, see below
warning

In Bash/Zsh, when the property interactive is true for a segment, the prompt length calculation can be wrong because of possible string expansions (e.g., \w in Bash and %d in Zsh which both expand to the current working directory), thus a right-aligned block is not being properly right-aligned.

Unfortunately, it's not possible for Oh My Posh to know the final prompt length since the string expansion is done by your shell, so use this at your own risk.

Style​

Style defines how a prompt is rendered. Looking at the most prompt themes out there, we identified 4 types. All of these require a different configuration and depending on the look you want to achieve you might need to understand/use them all.

Powerline​

What started it all for us. Makes use of a single symbol (powerline_symbol) to separate the segments. It takes the background color of the previous segment (or transparent if none) and the foreground of the current one (or transparent if we're at the last segment). Expects segments to have a colored background, else there little use for this one.

When you see black triangles (or other characters depending on the powerline_symbol you use) at the start of a segment, you can set leading_powerline_symbol to the "opening" version of the powerline_symbol. This will not use the inverted ANSI hack we have in place as that's not supported in every terminal. You might need to tweak your font settings to get the best alignment.

Git Bash

The powerline style has issues in Git Bash due to the icons width being incorrectly calculated, rendering the prompt broken when typing long commands or searching the history.

The following prompt configuration has the same problem:

export PS1=" "

Plain​

Simple. Colored text on a transparent background. Make sure to set foreground for maximum enjoyment.

Diamond​

While Powerline works great with a single symbol, sometimes you want a segment to have a different start and end symbol. Just like a diamond: < my segment text >. The difference between this and plain is that the diamond symbols take the segment background as their foreground color.

Accordion​

Same as Powerline except that it will display even when disabled, but without text. That way it seems as if the segment is not expanded, just like an accordion.

Cache​

The cache property allows you to control how often a segment is refreshed. This is useful when a segment is slow to generate or when you want to avoid fetching information too often. The cache property is an object with the following properties:

NameTypeDescription
durationstringthe duration for which the segment will be cached. The duration is a string in the format 1h2m3s. The duration is parsed using the time.ParseDuration function from the Go standard library. To disable the cache, use none
strategystringthe strategy to use to identify if we should show the segment's cache value. See below for more information on strategy
{
  "cache": {
    "duration": "1h",
    "strategy": "folder"
  }
}

Strategy​

Folder​

The folder strategy will cache the segment based on the current working directory. It will cache a separate value for each directory. This is useful when you for example work with language segments, or source control segments. The source control segments understand repository context in this case, so the same segment cache value is used when in a git repository, regardless of the folder you're in.

Session​

The session strategy will cache the segment based on the current shell session. Use this for segments you want to display at all times but don't want to refresh too often.

Include / Exclude Folders​

Sometimes you might want to have a segment only rendered in certain folders. If include_folders is specified, the segment will only be rendered when in one of those locations. If exclude_folders is specified, the segment will not be rendered when in one of the excluded locations.

{
  "include_folders": [
    "/Users/posh/Projects"
  ]
}
{
  "exclude_folders": [
    "/Users/posh/Projects"
  ]
}

The strings specified in these properties are evaluated as regular expressions. You can use any valid regular expression construct, but the regular expression must match the ENTIRE directory name. The following will match /Users/posh/Projects/Foo but not /home/Users/posh/Projects/Foo.

{
  "include_folders": [
    "/Users/posh/Projects/.*"
  ]
}

You can also combine these properties:

{
  "include_folders": [
    "/Users/posh/Projects/.*"
  ],
  "exclude_folders": [
    "/Users/posh/Projects/secret-project.*"
  ]
}
info
  • Oh My Posh will accept both / and \ as path separators for a folder and will match regardless of which is used by the current operating system.
  • Because the strings are evaluated as regular expressions, if you want to use a backslash (\) in a Windows directory name, you need to specify it as double backslashes, and if using JSON format you should escape it as \\\\.
  • The character ~ at the start of a specified folder will match the user's home directory.
  • The comparison is case-insensitive on Windows and macOS, but case-sensitive on other operating systems.

This means that for user Bill, who has a user account Bill on Windows and bill on Linux, ~/Foo might match C:\Users\Bill\Foo or C:\Users\Bill\foo on Windows but only /home/bill/Foo on Linux.

Hiding segments​

Conditionally​

To hide a whole segment including the leading and trailing symbol based on a template, the template must evaluate to an empty string. This can be achieved with conditional statements (if). The example below will render a diamond segment, only if the environment variable POSH_ENV is not empty.

Only spaces are excluded, meaning you can still add line breaks and tabs if that is something you're after.

{
  "type": "text",
  "style": "diamond",
  "leading_diamond": " ",
  "trailing_diamond": "",
  "foreground": "#ffffff",
  "background": "#d53c14",
  "template": "{{ if .Env.POSH_ENV }}  {{ .Env.POSH_ENV }} {{ end }}"
}

On the fly​

Sometimes run into a situation where you don't want to see a specific segment but the use-case does not justify using a conditional template. In this case you can use the oh-my-posh toggle <type> command to toggle the segment on or off. This works on a per shell session basis, meaning that if you toggle a segment off in one instance of a shell, it will not disable in the others.

To list the currently toggled segments, use oh-my-posh get toggles.